astonishing predicament

We are only once in the world, thrown into a situation that we have not chosen. Randomly we are tossed into a specific period and place. We do choose our particular geographic, historic, linguistic, cultural or socio-economic backdrop. We are left in the lurch, so to speak, only to do our utmost, with the hand dealt, during a finite span between the contingency of birth, and the certainty of death.

Andrew Brown (1996) Figure. Oil pastel, inks and charcoal on paper.

What are some of the implications of the human existential predicament with regard to absolute knowledge and certainty?

Are human finitude and the idea of infinity mutually exclusive? What must we keep in mind when applying abstract (analytical) knowledge to real world situations?

THE INTERIM

Many human lives are lived in full. Many are stunted, condemned to ignorance and marginality by wretched material circumstance. Other lives fail to reach their full potential simply because they are cut short by war, injustice, accident or other dreadful exigence.

What are some of the biological factors that make any given human conception highly improbable? What are some of the random, and not so random, epigenetic factors that come into play during infancy and early childhood development?

What is the role of contingency in the unfolding of individual lifetimes? Why do fate and destiny persist as resonant and relevant concepts?

It will be short. The Interim is mine;
And a man’s life no more than to say ‘one.’

Shakespeare: Hamlet. (V.2. 73-75)

Homo mortalis refers to questions arising from our brief sojourn in a vast and intricately connected universe.

Andrew Brown (2006) Nemersdorf, November 1945. Oil on canvas.

ASTONISHING PREDICAMENT SOURCES

PAUL RICOEUR

French philosopher [1915-2005]

Ricoeur (1991: 214-215) addresses the thrownness which characterizes the beginning of each human life:

Living is already having been born, in a condition we have not chosen, a situation in which we find ourselves, a quarter of the universe in which we may feel we have been thrown and are wandering, lost. And yet it is against this background that we can begin, that is to say, give a new course to things.

Ricoeur, Paul (1991) From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics II. Translated by Kathleen Blamey and John B. Thompson. First published in French as Du texte a l’action. Essais d’hemeneutique II, 1986. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

MARTIN HEIDEGGER

German philosopher [1889-1976]

“Man is that inability to remain and is yet unable to leave his place... And only when there is the perilousness of being seized by terror do we find the bliss of astonishment—being torn away in that wakeful manner that is the breath of all philosophizing.”

Martin Heidegger, from the Metaphysics Lectures of 1929-30

RUDIGER SAFRANSKI

German Writer and Nietzche Scholar [1945- ]

Heidegger biographer, Rüdiger Safranski, makes a pointed distinction between an ontological mindset and mere existence. He (1998: 150) informs us that

[t]he term ‘ontic’ designates everything that exists. The term ‘ontological’ designates the curious, astonished, alarmed thinking about the fact that I exist and that anything exists at all. Ontological, for instance is the inimitable sentence by Grabbe: ‘Only once in the world, and of all things as a plumber in Detmold!’

Safranski, Rüdiger (1998) Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil. Translated by Edwald Osers. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Christian Dietrich Grabbe [1801-1836]

German dramatist, born in Detmold, who was known as "a drunken Shakespeare."